n.
(1) ?’rough uncouth person’; (2) 'ugly sight'; (3) and (4) ?’flame’
(Modern English )Various suggestions have been made about the sense and etymology of the n. in Pe 911 (‘and þaʒ I be bustwys as a blose’) (see EVG 911n and McGee 361) by those who maintain the MS reading (see discussion by text for emendations), but none is entirely satisfactory: only (1) and (2) make much sense in context (and indeed depend on a sense extrapolated from context), while (3) and (4) offer just possible, but dubious, explanations of the form. (1) Goll (1891 edition, MED) derives it from an OFr adj. blos ‘deprived, empty’, getting a n. with the sense ‘uncouth person’ from an adj. which Emerson (1922: 85) argues means ‘deprived of common sense’. This is MED’s only citation of such a n. in ME. (2) EDD has a n. bloss (which it seems to relate to PDE blossom), meaning a buxom young woman or, ironically, an ugly sight. (3) Osgood instead glosses ’flame ?’ and cites Morris’s comparison of ON blossi and Dan blus, as well as (1) and (4), adding ‘none of these explanations is satisfactory’ and ‘probably rime determined the choice of word’. OIcel blossi (m) is only attested in a stanza attributed to the 10c. poet Egill Skallagrímsson and then in a poetic list of fire heiti, while the i-mutated neut. n. blys ‘torch’ (cp. OE blysa, blȳsa) occurs more frequently in prose, but only from the 14c. The vocalism of the former, nevertheless, apparently survives in numerous modern Scandinavian reflexes and these can be connected further to various Gmc words formed on the same verbal root PGmc *ƀlus- or ƀlūs- (e.g. Du blos ‘redness, flushing’, PDE blush). (4) Vant argues that the vowel o in blose has been shifted from a to fit the rhyme scheme and thus identifies it with MED’s blāse from OE blase, blæse ‘firebrand, torch, lamp’ (cp. MHG blās), but this presents phonological difficulties.
PGmc Ancestor
(3) *ƀlus- or ƀlūs-; (4) blās-
Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)
(3) blossi ‘flame’; cp. blys ‘torch’
(ONP (3) blossi (LP); cp. blys (sb.))
Other Scandinavian Reflexes
(3) Icel blossi, Norw bluss, Dan blus, OSw blus, blos; cp. Icel blys
OE Cognate
(3) cp. blysa, blȳsa (m.) ‘firebrand, torch’; (4) blase, blæse (n.) ‘firebrand, torch, lamp’
Phonological and morphological markers
Summary category
DD2
(1) hapax legomenon; (2) Sc, Ire. Yks. and Lin. The two citations of the relevant usage (EDD sense 2) are from Yks. and Lin.; (3) Would be a hapax legomenon in ME; (4) Common and widespread.
Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus
Pe 911
Goll emends to *wose ‘wild man’ which makes sense of the context but, as Hulbert (1927: 118) notes, at the cost of the alliteration. AW emend to bose ‘peasant’ (see further Vant 911n.)